The aim of the project is to provide a description of parent-child interactions in two groups of boys assessed as low in sociometric status and to provide an intervention procedure designed to determine whether altering parent-child play behavior has effects on social behavior of the children with their peers. In addition, the groups of low sociometric status children will be compared with a group of popular children in order to determine differences between the interaction patterns of the parents of these children. On the basis of sociometric assessment 24 neglected and 24 rejected children will be selected and videotaped in the home with each parent separately for 20 minutes on four occasions over 6 months. For the first 10 minutes, the parents will be asked to play with their children as they normally do, while in the second 10 minutes they will be encouraged to engage in physical play. In addition to a variety of sociometric measures, the teachers will be asked to rank the children in their class according to their popularity and perform a Q-Sort describing their social behavior. After the first videotaping session, each group of low sociometric status children will be subdivided, and one sub-group will receive coaching and modeling of competent parent-child interactions based on previous work showing associations between social competence in the child and the physical play and directiveness of the father and the verbal behavior of the mother. The group of popular children will remain untreated and will serve as a contrast group for the groups of treated and untreated children of low sociometric status. The data will provide a causal model of how parent-child interaction affects social competence in children and suggest better ways of intervening with a population that is at risk for psychiatric disorder.